No bus-taxi turf dispute resolution

The man operating the Dunedin night bus service says he
has bookings for this weekend, and will be back doing what he
points out it has been his legal right since July last year.

Dunedin civic and government organisations involved say they
won't be taking any action on the issue, but one recent taxi
industry member says with an All Blacks test in the city, the
tension might ramp up.

The Otago Daily Times reported yesterday that a rock was
thrown through the window of Dunedin operator Andrew
Rutherford's Night Bus last Sunday.

That followed tension between Mr Rutherford and some taxi
drivers, angry he was parking near, and sometimes on, taxi
stands.

Retired driver Rob Donaldson, who picks his taxi-driving
daughter up after her shift and has seen the problem, said
the bus should not park less than 20m from a taxi stand.

Mr Rutherford was loading passengers on the taxi stand, and
''shouldn't be there at all''.

This is the sort of innovation we want to see in Dunedin.
Many cities like Dunedin around the world are in the year
2014, while old Dunedin is still in the 80s, thinking the
future is the 90s! Mr Rutherford, we are with you, we will
support you, and hope many others come after you. Well done,
we want to see a 21st century Dunedin coming up! Taxis will
have to innovate if they want to catch up. The rest of the
world has already moved on, Dunedin needs to catch up!

Having spent many hours on some fairly horrendous evenings
waiting for a taxi to appear I applaud Mr Rutherford for
getting his business underway. Tonight Dunedin will
face the embarassment of not enough taxis willing to work.
Visitors impressions will be tainted by long queues and some
bad behavior because of long, long waiting times. Good on Mr
Rutherford for setting up a competitive enterprise to improve
users' experience.

You are dead right Andrew. Taxi drivers think they have this
entitlement to all and sundry. As you have quite properly
pointed out they can park on P5 for as long as they like,
they have no jurisdiction to cone off public areas without a
permit and do use bus stops to pick up/drop off passengers.
If the council parking enforcement agency has the discretion
to not ticket this mob for these breaches what justification
do they have for ticketing others.